Last Christmas a group of office workers gathered at a city hotel to celebrate the year’s end. The meal was a disaster as slow, surly staff made mistakes and delivered poorly cooked food.
Within an hour of the workers returning from lunch, negative reviews of the hotel started appearing on the Eatability and Urbanspoon websites. By the time Christmas Day rolled around, the reputation of the establishment was throughly trashed.
The rise of online review sites along with social media services like Facebook challenges many businesses, particularly those in the hospitality industry as café owners, restaurateurs and hotel managers struggle with unfavourable comments about their establishments.
Customers now research on the web before deciding to dine out or make a purchase, so online reviews can make or break an establishment. How does a business make sure their online reputation is safe.
Pay attention
The most important part is to pay attention to what people are saying about your business.
Big corporations will have their own social media staff and community managers to handle much of this, Telstra last week announced their online team will now be on the web 24/7.
Larger organisations will also subscribe to online monitoring services like BuzzNumbers and PeopleBrowsr to report what’s being said about them.
For smaller businesses it falls on the owner and staff to keep an eye on the popular review sites and to monitor the business’ Facebook page for negative comments.
Engage the critics
No matter how good your business is, you will get the odd unhappy customer. When that happens you need to contact them, preferably through the same public forum they have complained about you.
Once you’ve established contact, take the discussion offline onto email, phone or even face to face meetings. If the resolution is positive, try to publicise the result in the original channel the complaint was made.
Fix the problem
Despite many in the hotel industry believing that most online complaints are deliberate campaigns against them, regular complaints are usually legitimate and indicate an underlying systemic problem in the business.
If customers are complaining about service, you need to let your staff know customers are talking about them. Should there be regular criticisms of your food, then you need to talk to your kitchen staff or suppliers.
Don’t get defensive
Complaints happen. Even the best business in the world has a bad day or encounters a customer who woke up on the wrong side of bed.
If you think the criticism is unfair or even defamatory, don’t get angry and certainly do not make threats as you’ll only inflame the situation more.
Should the customer turn out to be unreasonable, at least by having publicly engaged them you’ll have shown the public you’re calm, professional and trustworthy.
Don’t Lie
The web is as great at exposing falsehoods as it is at spreading them. If you’re clearly not telling the truth, you’ll make your critics angrier and more determined to damage your reputation.
A common way many businesses cheat online is with false reviews. Despite industry claims that organised damaging comments are widespread, the reality is the opposite as many hoteliers and restaurateurs frequently post clumsy and obviously fake glowing reviews of their establishments. It’s a bad look and the establishment often ends up looking foolish.
Get your website right
Many businesses, particularly in hospitality, have lousy websites or a site that has no Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) so when someone searches for a hotel or restaurant their page comes up way below those for review sites or critical blog posts.
Regularly review how your site is doing and talk to your web designer or SEO consultant on making sure it’s coming up well when customers search for your type of business.
It’s important not to overlook local search services so ensure your business has been listed on Google Places and has a Facebook Local Business Page otherwise local searches will go to the online review sites or your competitors.
Ultimately, the best way to deal with negative online reviews is to minimise them by running a good business. The biggest effect the web is having on business is that it is making us accountable to our customers.
As big corporations are finding, the days of covering up poor goods and indifferent customer service with marketing is over – if your product doesn’t match the promise you make to your customers they will tell the world.
Paul
Great article. It’s not just hospitality that needs to take notice but EVERY BUSINESS.
Just attended an event where Dave Carroll from United Breaks Guitars fame presented. Like many of us, I’d read the 2009 case study before – United Airlines breaks his guitar on a routine flight, he gets zero customer service attention, he counters by recording and posting song on Youtube, gets over 10 million hits and estimates say United lost around $180 million in revenue.
Hearing him tell the story LIVE was impactful as it resonates even more now as social media becomes more prevalent.
Like Dave, thanks for reminding us all to LISTEN and be PREPARED online in an increasingly connected world.
Cheers, Iggy